Reunited
by VegetaCold
Summary: In Hell, Frieza finds Vegeta helpless after having died of sickness.


I saw him sitting beneath a tree, moving one gloved finger in rhythmic circles in the sand on which he sat, staring off into the distance in deep contemplation. He did not know I was watching him, and I liked it that way, for if he did, he would have tensed, his face twisting into an ugly scowl, and I would not be able to observe the real Vegeta, the beautiful Vegeta. For when he scowled, when that undiluted hatred took hold, his ugliness surpassed even his great power, power which I was now fully convinced of through years of silently observing him from above. During the time I raised him, that scowl never left. I told him his face would stick that way if he didn't start smiling more often, and while he was never capable of really _smiling_, he looked so much more appealing with a smirk on his face than he did a scowl.

Now, after years of watching this boy grow into a man, you would imagine I might see a smile every so often, when he is especially pleased or amused or even lost in his own thoughts, but I didn't, because I know that his thoughts are not a safe place, and that pleasure does not come easily to him. This strikes me as amazing; even I have smiled without evil intent, difficult as that may be to believe, and because of him, I might add. I have smiled _at_ him, perhaps even lovingly, though his word tastes incredibly odd on my tongue, and in return I have received a cold, questioning stare, and, occasionally, if he's incredibly upset or frustrated, a heated glare. Once, oh so long ago, I had smiled at him—that _loving _smile—and the corners of his mouth were twitching, as if he may be trying to return the gesture, but as I told him, once you've made too many ugly faces, it's very hard to go back to being beautiful, even if your body is impeccable, as his is, even if your delicate but somehow incredibly practiced hands make women and men alike long to be skirted by your fingers, as his hands do. Perhaps he is physically incapable of producing a smile, but I know that it is deeper than that.

I can tell that he does not feel sorry for himself; I suppose he feels it is a sign of weakness to mourn endlessly and pointlessly over what you haven't been blessed with or what you've lost, and he will not let himself. In many ways, I wish that he would; I wish that he would've come into my throne room more often and complained ceaselessly, even if it made me want to gouge my eardrums from my ears, because keeping so many emotions bottled tightly inside him has not only depressed him to the point that he cannot smile, but it has driven him to the brink of insanity. Trying to fight these demons that are much too powerful for him has made him plainly delusional. Perhaps I could have helped him, and perhaps I would have if he'd have come to me himself; it would have been incredibly out of character of me to have gone to him, even if it may have been best for him in the end. I suppose I had reasoned that if he was _so _depressed, he would overcome that prideful nature of his and come to me. But he hadn't, because this was something he was incapable of doing, for that ego he possesses is another demon he fights constantly for control of his being. Now that I know he couldn't come even if he had _wanted_ to, I feel something I did not think I was capable of feeling—guilt.

Now I realize that if _I _had gone to him we would not, perhaps, be here now.

I watched him for a long while as he stared passively off into the distance, twirling those tantalizing fingers in the sand distractedly, lost in thought. He looked neither upset nor angry, not saddened or frustrated, despite the fact that he'd just passed away—though I was not entirely certain _why _exactly—and I stood amazed, sitting far enough away that he would not have seen me even if he were to come back into our reality, a small, indulgent smile mounted on my lips, for I began to wonder—had my little Vegeta finally _matured_?

The answer was clear. I know that he has not fully recovered from that terrible experience on Namek, and neither have I, I can affirm, but I suppose we have both grown considerably because of it. I feel as though our fight was inevitable, and we would not have been able to coexist with the tension that fueled this fight still boiling relentlessly between us. I suppose those Dragonballs were what made that pot of tension boil over, which I feel is really a blessing in disguise. As I have said, it is much healthier to throw things out into the open where they can be dealt with and then moved on from; I have seen this enough in my own mother and father, who are so incredibly unalike that it makes you wonder why in the world they might have bonded in the first place—physical attraction, I've always thought with disgust. They often fight, but afterward, they seem to be so much closer, closer than they'd ever been before, for they are newly educated, revived. I feel this way now toward Vegeta, and I hope that he feels this way as well, because while every ounce of resentment in his beautiful body may still be directed at me, we are trapped here together all the same, and there is nothing that will change that.

Looking at him now, I can see how he has changed physically as well as mentally. It is painfully obvious that he has lost a great deal of weight since our little dispute on Namek, perhaps as much as thirty or forty pounds, though it isn't as if he weighed very much in the first place; the last check-up my doctors had administrated to him had read him at one hundred and sixteen pounds, which was alarmingly low in itself. I had encouraged him to take time to rest and focus on gaining weight instead of the normal, incredibly harsh training regime he'd set for himself, but this idea did not sit well with him, and I suppose I was able to understand why. Perhaps it was singularly driven by his need to achieve that goal I had once thought so out of reach, but it also derived from the helplessness he would feel if he were to be fattened up—confined to a bed, being stuffed at regular intervals. He had refused, and I had decided that if he continued to lose weight, even a pound more, I would have him fattened if it meant tying him down to his bed.

Now that weight of one hundred and sixteen pounds seems incredibly heavy compared to this skin-stretched skeleton that was the Saiyan prince. His cheeks were two shadowy hollows, and though he was clad in a black tank top and long, baggy pants of the same color, I could see his ribs jutting sharply from underneath. I wondered as I stared at him in dismay if they had fed him while he stayed with that blue-haired woman.

His hair had also been shaved slightly around the ears and at the nape of his neck. I thought he had perhaps done this to keep himself cool, for Earth's climate is warmer than that of Planet Frieza, while he trained. I couldn't say that this new haircut of his was not attractive, but I did not care for it as much as I had when his hair was long and full. I suppose it was simply because he looked so much more _feral _this way, and it was, I felt, quite attractive.

While his body might continue to shrink and his hair trimmed, one thing remained constant about the Saiyan prince—his height. He had not grown an inch since I'd last encountered him, but it did not bother me as it did him, despite how I'd always reassured him that his power became twice as impressive considering his small size. He did not feel this way, but I did, for I, too, am considerably small, and haven't grown an inch since I was twenty-two.

After a long while of observing him, I took a step toward Prince Vegeta, and the fog left his deep onyx eyes immediately. His hand stopped twirling, and it occurred to me swiftly—perhaps Vegeta had _known _I was there all the while, but had not acknowledged me for I was not troubling him, and in all honesty, it would not surprise me in the least if this were true, for I know how finely tuned his senses are.

"Frieza," he said, his voice relaxed but somehow possessing such firmness, his eyes not moving, his expression of passiveness unchanging, "I know you're there," he said, affirming my belief.

I stepped out of my hiding place, once again feeling an emotion I hadn't known I was capable of feeling—sheepishness—and another I'd felt once before, after I'd been defeated by the Saiyan known as Goku—humiliation, for I very briefly had the notion that Vegeta had grown so much smarter than I while we'd been apart.

"Surprise," I said, smirking at him, trying to force these emotions back down into the darkness within me from whence they came.

"The welcoming committee, are you then?" he said, a smirk beginning to form on his pale lips…but he still was not looking at me, and this bothered me greatly.

I began to approach him, angling so that I might be able to stand in his line of vision. "Yes, that's right," I said as I did.

"I feel so much better now," he said, hatful sarcasm taking hold of his voice—a delicious voice, one that was thick with an oddly European accent, despite the fact that his father's voice held little trace of this. "I was afraid to move about without first being given the go-ahead."

"My, aren't you in a good mood?" I said, stepping in front of the small thing, my shadow falling over him and swallowing him up. "Funny, considering the circumstances, wouldn't you say?"

At this, the Saiyan looked up slowly, his face remaining passive but becoming very cold, unfriendly. His eyes stared up at me, eyes which held not a trace of fear but which burned with silent hatred, eyes which were challenging, inviting me to _say that again, a little louder this time_.

"A good mood," he repeated, his voice now possessing that same coldness his face exhibited. "I haven't been, but I can fix that now."

Though I loomed over him, he stood with no trouble, expecting me to shy away…and I did, because in all truthfulness I didn't know whether or not I was _capable_ of defeating a Super Saiyan, and if I were to try and fail here, all would see…including my former subjects, and God knew how much they might enjoy watching _that_.

"Relax," I told him, hoping to placate him, holding my hands up passively. "I didn't come here to fight you, Vegeta."

"Then why did you?" he said slowly, glaring at me with such iciness—iciness I had never seen on his face, not even when his hatred for me had peaked—that my blood ran cold.

"It's been awhile since we've seen each other."

"Not long enough," he spat in disgust. "It was so nice to go on without having to see your ugly face and hear that voice of yours—it's like nails running down a chalkboard."

"I was hoping you would have matured, Vegeta. I suppose I expected far too much from someone like you," I said, shaking my head and meeting his gaze with a cold glare of my own.

"Oh, please, bitch," he said, rolling his eyes. "When your dick grows longer than two inches, then you can talk to me about being mature."

"You little imp!"

He began to laugh, unfazed, very proud of his little remark, I assumed, for someone with a brain the size of his will rejoice after it has taken them five minutes to produce what they believe is a _clever_ insult…which it wasn't.

I glared at him, shaking my head in disappointment, tapping my foot impatiently as I waited for him to overcome his fit of laughter.

"Oh, god," he moaned as his laughter began to wind down steadily. The cockiness was gone in his voice and in its place there was sickness. "I…"

The distaste left my face as I stared at him curiously. "What is…?"

In that moment, he turned and ran into the woods nearby so quickly that the Saiyan was gone before I was capable of realizing what had happened. Staring into the woods in thick dismay, I heard him vomiting.

* * *

The sounds of his vomiting echoed throughout the forest that day in Hell so loudly that the dreadful din stirred the birds from their perches within the brittle trees. Like something out of dark poetry, the birds—ravens, for they were the only birds that nest in this neck of Hell—took to the rapidly darkening skies, screaming their surprise in ear-splitting crows as they were uprooted. I watched them leave the dead trees with the regalness of doves but the skittishness of pigeons, feeling just a _bit _more than mystified as I did. My ears rang with the sounds of his coughing and the sickening splatter of vomit steadily pouring from his mouth and onto the ground from which no grass could grow. And the question arose in my mind once again—just _how _exactly _did _he die?

During this period of time—the unfortunate time of his death—I had not watched Vegeta as I might normally have, for Hell had not been as peaceful as it seemed to always have been. My mother, Queen Cold, had wandered into my father's territory—actually, _King Yemma's _territory which he had claimed as his own and now resided in with my brother and I—which had not pleased him in the slightest. As I might have mentioned, the two fools I am forced to address as my mother and father are so incredibly different that they are apt to fighting ceaselessly with each other over things that are frankly very unimportant. While my mother's arrival should not have stirred the sleeping hatred for that woman in my father, it _did_, and quickly.

During that period of time—a week, perhaps—my memory is hazy—in which I had taken my eyes away from my prince on Earth, my mother and father argued day and night things that I did not, and never fully could, understand. I thought that if it were not for the ki-restraining collars King Yemma had been forced to lock around their necks to keep them under control, they might have killed each other. Poor Cooler and I were trapped in the midst of this, my father clutching onto me for support and my mother Cooler. I had searched for my _own _sense of support, my demeanor steadily weakening; Cell had been in the small home we'd constructed from stone with me that day when my mother had returned and had assured me that he would see me through my troubles best he could. I assumed he had only said this because he saw my mother walk in, her hips swinging sultrily and her lips turned out in a disgusting pout, her dark eyes shimmering, but when my father saw her and his booming voice echoed throughout the place, the android decided that even _she_ was not worth the trouble. He was out the door almost as quickly as Vegeta's retreat to the leafless forest to vomit, and I couldn't blame him; if _I _had been so lucky, I wouldn't have stayed either.

Vegeta forgotten, I spent that period of time trying to bandage the wounds my parents had so mercilessly scratched into each other's hearts as well as their skin, traveling back and forth between them with messages consisting of ideas they'd never said, things I'd fashioned in hopes of bringing some form of order into our poor excuse for a family. More desperate than ever to find a solution to this ongoing problem, I had turned to Hell's witch-doctor, a small woman who dresses solely in black cloaks and resides in the deepest region of the underworld. She gave me a small bag of what she called 'special cocoa beans' tied with a rough piece of twine. When I asked her just _what_ exactly they were, she had explained that they were meant to increase sexual potency.

"The best kind of medicine for feuding couples," she had said, tapping the pouch with one crooked finger. "Put these in a pretty box and leave it for your mother as if it were a present from her lover or vice versa. It doesn't matter. Either way, they will have forgotten their feud by morning."

I had done this, dropping the dusty auburn beans into a crisp, clear plastic bag and tied it with a thick purple ribbon. Reasoning that if the witch-doctor had perhaps poisoned the beans in an attempt to murder my parents, I decided to give them to my mother, for I had developed quite an irrational hatred roused from my equally as irrational jealousy for her, and I had not had to think twice about who I would have liked better to live. On a small slip of paper, I wrote, mimicking my father's crude, almost illegible script, "I am sorry, my queen." Then, I had added for effect, despite the fact that it sickened me to do so, "I love you." I dropped the bag and the scrap of paper onto the ground outside our home on which my mother sat night and day in proud and unwavering defiance, waiting for my father to let her in, after she'd gotten up to go to the bathroom. Then, I retreated quickly inside to go lie down and doze awhile.

I woke in the early hours of the morning to the sound of my mother moaning softly and crying out lightly on occasion. My father was grunting. I heard the wood bed beside mine on which they slept rhythmically groaning as my father thrust, and I opened my eyes slowly, momentarily dazed, bestowed with the idea that a hoard of rats beneath the floorboards were clawing for escape as my ears rang with the sound of the bed rocking back and forth. I sat up immediately, first looking down at the floor in my misty frame of mind, then turning my gaze to the two fools who lay before me after I'd noticed my father's tail curled tightly around one of the bed's feet, as if trying to steady himself as he thrust into her.

"_Father?_" I'd gasped, dreamily disregarding the cocoa beans.

They both froze in place, and slowly, as if terrified of what might lay before their eyes, they looked up.

"What are you two _doing_?"

"Nothing," my father said quickly. "Go back to sleep, son."

I shook my head in undiluted amazement and mild disgust, and even knowing this was truthfully my own doing the urge to vomit just as Vegeta did now did not escape me. Grotesque as it may have been, I knew it was needed if we were ever to resemble something of a normal family, so I obediently lay back down and turned over so I did not have to watch as they made their awful love. My father wished me a hurried goodnight and they began again. I drifted into sleep while my ears rang with the sounds of their sex.

The next morning, I walked into our makeshift kitchen to see my mother pressed into my father's chest, purring as he stroked her body as if she was a housecat. My disgust returning, I rolled my eyes and promptly exited the house, but I was pleased.

When I reentered the most public part of Hell, I was intercepted by Cell. On his lips a deep frown was plastered.

"What is it?" I said, assuming stupidly that he was guilty for abandoning me in the line of fire, and deciding I would childishly give him trouble for doing so. "_You _were not the one who had to repair your parents' marriage."

"I don't have parents," he said somberly. "I was born in a lab."

"What a sad existence you are. _Were_."

"Frieza—"

"Yes? Have you decided to apologize?"

"He's dead, you know," he said slowly, regarding me with cold, compassionless eyes, like the eyes of a coroner…and in many ways, he was.

"Who is dead?"

"That kid you're so fond of."

"_Kid?_"

"Vegeta. You _know_, the guy who defeated Buu and came damn near close to defeating me?"

"Yes, he did, didn't he?" I had said first, my voice shot through with unmistakable pride. Then, "_What?_"

"Do you know what I saw projected in the crystal ball the other day? The biggest news down on Earth that day was Vegeta's death, but there wasn't a funeral or anything like that. They just put his body into a metal drawer in a morgue somewhere after he dropped dead outside of his house. At least, that's what I've heard. Don't ask me what was wrong with him—I'd like to know that myself."

On his knees and clutching his belly, Vegeta vomited thin stomach acid, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. I watched the hunched-over Saiyan motionlessly, noting his face, one which now seemed so pale under steadily darkening skies, one which held two dark marbles from which tears began to stream, in utter dismay.

_He died of sickness_, I thought as I watched this terrible little display, a sickness of my own churning in my belly. _He caught ill and it took him so quickly that he couldn't even check into a hospital—he's not _wearing_ hospital garments. Cell was right in that he must have really simply _dropped dead _without warning._

After a moment of studying the sickly prince, I started toward him in long strides. I thought that he would not notice me, for he was still preoccupied with his incessant vomiting, but he did, and when I was only an arm's length or two away from him he whipped around, still expelling fluid from his pale lips. I was startled, but I kept my composure even so.

"Let me help," I offered gently, reaching toward him.

"Never," he hissed, and vomited again.


End file.
